...and breathe.

I am finally settled!!! :D I have moved back down south, to a beautiful love nest with Lovely Boy, settled in to my new job and for the time being at least, all is calm. I can breathe!!! It is such a relief, we have even finally sorted out our broadband, so in theory I can actually get back into writing this blog without feeling the need to close the screen every five seconds because my sister has walked in to the room.

In terms of the BVC, exam results for year 1 were fine. I'm on target for a VC if things carry on the way they are going. The nerves got the best of me in my Advocacy 1 exam which seriously sucked as all year I was doing so well, but as everything else went well I'm not allowing it to eat away at me too much. I've had 2 pupillage interviews this time around, the first one (on the day I moved house) was a total train wreck, I got lost on my way there and was pretty flustered and couldn't really think straight - so there was no surprise when I didn't get through to the second round. The second interview went really well I think. The panel had really read my application in advance and their questions were quite encouraging. I know it is unlikely that I'll secure pupillage this year, given it's my first crack at it, but still I'm slightly apprehensive about tomorrow as no rejection has been forthcoming as yet.

As much as I've moaned about being so busy over the last few months, I've still found plenty of time to party all over London since I've been back, and I even partied in Germany for a weekend with my friends and a boat load of HOT German men. Lovely Boy was at home, naturally ;)

It's soooo good to be back! :)

Networking

I have done some soul searching recently and realised that I have been holding myself back. I've been adamant that I will find a way to pay my own way through bar school, support myself completely and not owe my eventual success (positive thinking) to anyone but myself. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with that attitude, except that I've been letting this determination get in the way of taking up opportunities that will help me when they present themselves. Where people have offered to help me I've turned them down. A family friend offered to pay my BVC deposit as a Birthday Present and I said no. I drink with a number of Barristers on a weekly basis and I have never once asked them to help me with work experience or CV advice or anything else because it feels a bit like begging.

Part of it has been my not wanting to be hypocritical. I go on and on at length about the advantages placed at the feet of rich kids who know all the right people etc etc, so to use my own networks surely isn't much better than that? But really, I've just been being too proud to ask for help. I think it has a lot to do with my upbringing, not just in the sense that I'm from a poor background, but also because I don't have the nicest mother in the world, and she has always tried to take my achievements away from me and make out that I owe her something because I did well at school. So I have a bit of a fear that if I accept help from somebody, in 10 years time, it will come back to haunt me.

On Friday, I finally saw sense. Barristers are self-employed. You are a "business", and there is nothing wrong in my mind in making use of networks for business opportunities. I do it everyday in my 9-5 job and it is what gives our company an edge over the competition. So I have decided to try and let go of this particular hang up, because the reality is it doesn't make a difference to anyone but myself whether or not I accept the help of others.

Within hours of making this decision, I have been able to arrange a mini-pupillage and a week's marshalling and got some advice about my CV. So from where I'm sitting, not a bad decision. If it is hypocritical, and I'm not sure it really is, at least I've not been paying Oxbridge Law to apply for pupillage for me! That would be hypocritical, and very very sad.

On another note, in my last post I mentioned that I wouldn't be posting for a while as Lovely Boy is staying with me and I wanted to keep the blog a secret... I failed miserably, caving in to him yesterday. He's so stuck on which GDL provider to go with (he has a choice between BPP, CoL and Kaplan), and I've been giving him advice based on what I've read from other blogs, which has confused him because he had no idea where it was all coming from. Plus I just can't keep secrets and was desperate to tell him as soon as I clapped eyes on him! I'm so weak!! If anyone has any advice for me to pass onto him, please drop me a comment. I'm sure he'll start reading this blog now to check up on the horrible things I have to say about him anyway, so he'll definitely get it.

OLPhew!

It has been hard not to notice that there are one or two (thousand) stressed out wannabe Barristers stressing themselves into heavy drinking thanks to the return of the OLPAS season. I am so grateful that this year at least, there is nothing on OLPAS that I can apply for. I had a quick look to check, as the theory is that you can apply for the 2011/12 session as well, but the handful of chambers (by that I mean literally 5) that offer that option are all commercial sets that are just not my scene. So I am spared for one last year before the madness sets in. For those of you going through hell at the moment though, good luck! I hope you get the pupillage of your dreams. This year. So you wont be competing with me next year.

I'm in a play at the moment, which is very exciting. It's been over a year since I was in a play and I'm loving it! It is also keeping me going now that I am back in the office after my mini pupillage. Work is so uninspiring in comparison. But, working hard and earning money will help me to get to the Bar so I've got to keep at it. Eugh.

Lovely Boy is returning to the nest for a few weeks tomorrow. He's been away for some time now, and I'm not sure how long he will be staying. I'm really excited about seeing him, but it does mean that I may have difficulty posting for a while as he will no doubt take up most of my free attention. More importantly, he doesn't know about this blog. I don't want him to know about it either, mainly for anonymity's sake but also because as much as I love him, cherish him and hope live happily ever after with him, it's really refreshing to have something in my life that he knows nothing about. So basically I wont be posting while he is around. Try not to miss me too much... :p

No colouring in for me...

I got accepted onto the BVC today :D

BPP were down as my first choice, and they've offered me a place on their part time course. I know many of you have your opinions on the merits of each of the schools, but I'm going to go with them. City don't offer as good a part time course and CofL, well, rejected me (on the grounds that I'd put them as my third choice).

So, colouring in or no colouring in, my decision has kind of been made for me; for which I am sooo grateful, as I would have spent weeks agonising over whether my instincts about BPP were wrong. Now I can still agonise over that, but at least I wont have a choice about where I go!

Last week I sat a FRU exam thing, which was an experience... Made even more memorable by the (ugly yet seemingly intelligent) GDL guy that decided the end of the exam was a good time to hit on me... Thankfully I had to get home to the cat.

The exam itself was very odd I thought. I constantly felt like I wasn't giving them what they were asking for, and had no idea how much they expected to be written for each response. It was a bit bizarre being around all those students as well. Not because there was anything wrong with them, but the fact that I found their company quite pleasant. I had been expecting to find them all as annoying as they were at uni, but they weren't. There was even very little bragging about work experience and superiority complex induced conversation. In fact, had the cat not been waiting for me at home in need of feeding, love and attention (which it hadn't received the night before as I didn't go home) I might have even taken up ugly but seemingly intelligent boy's offer of drinks. My boyfriend is currently in another country with his ex-girlfriend (!), and I could do with some jealousy inducing anecdotes to pass onto him. I've been collecting them recently.

I'm also not sure when I'll find out the result (of the exam that is, not the jealousy inducing anecdotes; I don't know when that will be sorted out either though...), but it could go either way. Weirdly, if I haven't passed, I don't think it will bother me. I'll just sit it again and see what happens. There was a girl who announced before the exam that she was resitting and it was the hardest exam she'd ever done in her life, which was oddly reassuring.

In the mean time though, I'm set to vegetate at home as I seem to have come down with the flu. :( I'm desperately hoping my immune system kicks it out asap as I have a tendency to take ages to recover from stuff like this and I have a mini-pupillage next week!

Competitive Law

My boyfriend, Lovely Boy, has decided that he wants to be a Barrister too. He's applied to do the GDL and he hears whether hes been accepted around about the same time as I'll hear about the BVC (I think).

This worries me. I've noticed that between wanabee lawyers there is a lot of bitchyness and ill will. The success rates are so low and the competition so fierce that this makes sense, and it's just something you have to accept. Everyone tries to put others down, either by making themselves out to be superior, or even by directly criticising and belittling each other. The fact is, we're all really nice people in the pub, but when we meet a competitor, the claws are out and we're always on the look out for a sign as to whether or not we think this person could be a threat to our future happiness. I've found myself on the receiving end once or twice and I've discovered I have my own approach: excessive displays of (patronising) kindness... Sounding as supportive as possible so that I don't show any fear and come across as cool and calm as possible, like I know some secret and have it in the bag. Which I really don't. I don't even have (that much) control over it, I realise I'm doing it but find it impossible to stop. But then, there are far worse than me out there, they don't even try to be nice.

Maybe you disagree and this isn't your experience at all, but think back to how you were judging the Pupillage chasers on the BBC show "Barristers" and then tell me you're a nice supportive person and you want everyone to make it! Or for a prime example of the crazy ass bitchin that sometimes turns up read the comments on one of Android's articles on Law Village, "Join the Queue" back in November. http://www.legalweek.com/Navigation/95/Articles/1178580/Join+the+queue.html

Its clear that we're just not always very nice to each other. Especially that loser. (Solidarity Android, solidarity - and that isn't me being fake patronising kind!)

Anyway, do I really want to risk my relationship with Lovely Boy turning into that? The fact that we're so close could make it worse. I'm not like this with my friends but I'm worried that I might be too competitive to encourage him, and be too jealous to celebrate his successes. This would probably make me a bad person. It definitely would make me an awful girlfriend. Absolutely not marriage material. (sigh). Or maybe he would get cocky, arrogant and think he was better than me. Or worse actually be better than me. He might even turn into a Law Zombie and sell his beautiful and pure soul to the corporate world. It has the potential for disaster and heartbreak. I want to give myself (and him) more credit than that. But I've wanted this for such a long time, I can't guarantee I won't go a little crazy. Plus, when I do have crazy stressed out moments, invariably he's the one on the receiving end.

I've talked this through with him, obviously not in a "you/I can't do this because our 3 year relationship is more important than your future career prospects" way, but more of a "aaarrgh panic" way. We decided that we'll just have to keep each other in check and make sure we keep the demons at bay.

But then I had a thought. It might not be so bad, maybe we could work as a team. Isn't the whole reason there are so many of us blogging away about this rough ride to the Bar because we need a bit of support and advice from each other? Maybe, just maybe, it could be something beautiful and slightly vomit making...

The most problematic thing about this whole situation though, is that I wont be able to make up laws to win arguments anymore... Bad times.

Anyone have any advice? Useful anecdotes? Vomit making stories? I'd love to hear it, even if it's just to take my mind off the looming BVC application accept/reject emails that will be pinging out of BVC online in less than 2 weeks time!

ps my cousin, Special K, has started her own blog! http://thespecialkgirl.blogspot.com/